


Heavier Than a Crown

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 06:34:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5365034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They talk, the way they always do. Amell reveals the fruitlessness of her quest, and Alistair tells her about the Fade and Hawke and the Inquisitor. It’s hours before she takes his hand and pulls him toward her, touches her lips to his cheek. Here is the unspoken thing between them, their hearts split open like pomegranates. Here is the truth of them: they are both alive, and they are both changed, and they are both hungry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavier Than a Crown

 

Alistair remembers his crush on the Hero of Ferelden with fondness. Earnest compliments, trembling hands, his cheeks stained a red as furious as the rose he’d given her. He had been young, and Amell younger still. He had pictured her in a veil. His chest had felt like a residence for those birds she liked so much, the blue ones with wings like smoke. They tapped their beaks against his ribs to the beat of his heart, fluttering and singing.

By the time the Archdemon fell, the birds had torn right through his lungs and left him with scarlet stains on his hands and belly and sword, instead of his cheeks. The Hero dug her nails into the crook of his elbow, trembling, clad in the blue of the Wardens and not the white of a bride, and Alistair thought, _Oh_. _So that’s that._

Two years later Sister Nightingale wrapped his fingers around a mug of the strongest ale that side of Ferelden (which side was it? the West, perhaps), and told him, “Sit.” He had loved Leliana, too, in that way that one does when the world is burning and she hasn’t died on him yet. Like a sister and a friend and a warrior. He sat.

“You ever wonder what would have happened between you two?” Leliana asked him, and Alistair shrugged.

“Nothing.” He smiled at her, hair longer than he’d ever allowed it to grow and a thin burn mark disappearing over the curve of his jaw – a gift from the last darkspawn he’d fought. “I knew I would have wanted a family; she’s never hid how badly she longed for freedom.”

Leliana narrowed her eyes, bitter. “Didn’t work out very nicely for her, did it?” She loved the Hero, too.

Alistair searched his empty chest for the birds, and found that it was not even the same cage that had kept them. “I don’t know,” he told her, gaze lost in the fire of her hair. “Depends what you mean by freedom.”

* * *

 

 

Not many people know the Hero of Ferelden by face. The statues make her nose too sharp, her mouth a jagged line of fearlessness and sacrifice. The Hero wears armor the color of stormy skies and moonlight, commands the Wardens with determination and justice; who would look at the smiling woman in a heavy cape of wool and leather, and call her Warden?

“Sure, love,” the tavern keeper waves, frowning at a piece of parchment; “He didn’t say he was expectin’ anyone, but seems like you know him. Second down the hall, his room is.”

Alistair sucks in a breath at the sight of her, his knuckles white on the door but his smile relieved. It has not been long since they’ve seen each other – they’ve been apart for far longer in the past – and yet. And yet. “You got my message.”

“Did you get mine? The one that asks you to stay put and trust me to do everything in my power to find what we’re looking for?” Amell ducks into the room and tosses her coat onto his bed without invitation. The quarters are small but clean – a blessing around these parts. She is momentarily irritated with herself for coming. “Don’t tell me the world is falling apart,” she mutters.

“It is, but that’s not your responsibility anymore.” Alistair shrugs. “The Inquisitor asked me to find you. It didn’t sound like a question.”

“Since when do you answer to –”

“Alysanne.” She wonders when the Maker will take pity on her and allow the tenderness in Alistair’s expression to strike her down at last. It has had ten years to slowly kill her; it is about fucking time it succeeded. “Are you truly angry that I’m here?”

She shakes her head slowly, and sinks into the only chair the room has to offer. “I’ve missed you,” she sighs, a bare truth. A long time ago, when they were fumbling children around one another, she would not have been able to suppress a flush at the admission. Now she looks at Alistair and her pulse thumps steadily in her wrist; her heart still for a moment, settles down like a beast in a cave. No uncertainty, now. It’s been lifetimes since then.

They talk, the way they always do. Amell reveals the fruitlessness of her quest, and Alistair tells her about the Fade and Hawke and the Inquisitor. It’s hours before she takes his hand and pulls him toward her, touches her lips to his cheek. Here is the unspoken thing between them, their hearts split open like pomegranates. Here is the truth of them: they are both alive, and they are both changed, and they are both hungry.

Alistair’s hand is warm and steady against the inside of her thigh, his teeth pressing to the junction of her neck and shoulder. Amell wants to stay like this forever, but she wants the rest of him far more. “Can I tell you something?” he murmurs into her skin. She makes a noise that sounds vaguely like assent, so he continues. “You were telling a story a while ago, the one that ends with my humiliation in front of an entire town. I put my hand over your mouth to get you to stop.”

He strokes her leg like he has forever at his disposal, but the tension in his spine reminds them that it might be shorter than they’d like. His index fingers catches on the edge of Amell’s smallclothes; it is nearly embarrassing how heavy the fabric is already. “But you laughed,” Alistair continues. “And licked my hand, because you’re ridiculous, and then you were trying to get away but my fingers slipped into your mouth for a second. It was such an innocent thing.” He exhales sharply against her skin. It takes her a few beats to recognize the sound for a laugh. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. Couldn’t stop wondering, if that was how your mouth felt, what would it be like to have my fingers in your cunt?”

Sweet Alistair, with his shaking voice and his unflinching love and his hand pushing the cloth of her smalls aside, two fingers curling inside of her and his thumb against her clit. Amell jerks, and whines deep in her throat, but his mouth is too busy with her neck to muffle the sound. It is not confidence but affection in his face when he lifts his gaze; the words cost him his certainty and a blush, the necessary brazenness a rare thing. They’ve earned him her hand in his hair, though, her pupils so wide and their depth so endless that Alistair forgets to breathe. “ _Alistair_ ,” she begs, voice too thin.

She is the first woman he’s kissed but not the first he’s lain with, and he knows that she will be the last. Ten years ago he would have had her in a bed, furs pale against her hair. It would have mattered _how_ , and it would have mattered _when_ , and it would have mattered that they thought they’d stay the same for all eternity.

Now there are wrinkles around her eyes, callouses and scars on her fingers, and she does not laugh at the same things she used to. Now he is on his knees in a tavern the name of which he does not remember, and her skirts are around her hips, and she is saying his name like she’s been saying it for years.

“I wish I’d made you king,” she gasps the confession, eyes shut. “The crown would have been lighter than the Warden armor that you wear. Fuck, Alistair, you should have been the fucking king.”

Amell asks him for more and he gives it to her, gives her everything. She rides his fingers with a shamelessness that awes him, and comes with his mouth sucking a bruise into the swell of her breast. They do make it to the bed eventually – a small, creaking thing. It sings when Amell sinks deeper onto him, groans when Alistair guides her hips with the same dedication she gives to her Wardens. It has taken them ten years to get to this tiny room in Ferelden, to accept the way their grief has changed them.

What a pity that now, too, the world is ending.


End file.
